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Trump’s Tariff Tantrum: A Futile Attempt to Stymie China’s Development

Just days into the Year of the Snake, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing a 10% additional tariff...

What Makes Shanghai’s Business Environment the Best in China

A joint report released last month by four prominent Chinese think tanks has shed new light on Shanghai’s commercial potential. Ranking it the best business city in China, the WANB Institute, China Strategic Culture Promotion Association, China Economic Media Association, and YICAI Research Institute analyzed a series of interdependent factors that contribute to Shanghai’s urban business environment index. The result was not a complete surprise since Shanghai has been leading China’s growth for quite some time. But the study does offer an opportunity for China watchers to understand what makes the city’s economy so remarkable. One of the major reasons for Shanghai’s success is the infrastructure index that turned out to be the highest in all of China. The city has established itself as the de facto business capital by modernizing its infrastructure to cater to businesses from across the globe heading to China to benefit from the world’s second-largest economy. A monumental US$21 billion investment last year was spent on mega projects such as the construction of the Yangshan deepwater port, the renovation of the Hongqiao International Airport and the expansion of the metro network. Shanghai is the world’s fifth largest financial hub and is working its way up to becoming the global leader. This January, an action plan was approved by the State Council to make the city […]

Greater Bay Area: Prospects and Challenges

The recently announced Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is an ambitious initiative to link different cities in the Pearl River Delta region into a dynamic financial and innovative powerhouse. As a prominent part of China’s national strategic plan, the proposed link involves 11 cities with a combined GDP twice that of San Francisco’s Big Bay and close to the similar scheme of New York. The region also has combined trade of US$1.5 trillion, more than three times that of the Tokyo Bay Area. In fact, the combined economic size of the Chinese Bay Area is comparable to Canada as the world’s tenth largest economy. A new vision for Hong Kong’s role in the regional cooperation is necessary to achieve mutual benefits and maintain overall competitiveness. As part of the integration plan, a series of large-scale infrastructure and transport projects, in particular the 26-km Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (Hong Kong Section) and the 55-km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, both opened in the second half of 2018, are vital links to facilitate the flow of people, goods, services, and capital. This in turn allows the concept of a “one-hour living circle” embedded in the Greater Bay Area project to be thoroughly realized. All these infrastructure developments are indeed highly effective in reducing the time and cost of overall integration. Hong Kong could […]